


A Source of Little Visible Delight

by sneaqui



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 21:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneaqui/pseuds/sneaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur attempts to go on vacation. Mild angst and much introspection ensues. An Arthur character study and origins story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Source of Little Visible Delight

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on the Inception kink meme back in April, 2011 as a fill for [this prompt](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/17669.html?thread=37486341#t37486341).
> 
> I've cleaned it up a bit since then and am archiving it here for my own purposes more than anything. But if you've never read it before and would like to, I hope you enjoy it!! :D It's a fic of which I'm rather proud.

“No, every time, Rita. You have to replace the line EVERY. TIME. Or at least sterilize it. Otherwise... well, otherwise, shit like this will happen.”

Arthur’s on a train from Paris to Toulouse. Right now he’s fielding the sixth phone call that he’s received in the past hour. He’s got his phone pressed to his ear and his head hanging down between his shoulder blades, and he’s staring at the ugly beige carpet in his “first class” cabin. Smoking has been outlawed on these trains for ten years, but that just means that his cabin smells like 10-year-old cigarette smoke and air-freshener. At least it’s private, so he can yell at the people on the other end of the line without any civilian casualties.

“If nothing else, he can just boil it. No... no, I don’t think throwing it in the dishwasher is such a good idea... besides the fact that I’ve never encountered a dishwasher while on the European continent.”

Arthur’s been walking through dreams, his own and those of countless other people, for almost five years. Four years, eight months and thirteen days to be exact. That puts him somewhere in the vicinity of the 90th percentile in terms of experience within the dreamshare community.

This means that he has to answer a shitload of questions.

“Yes... yes, Rita. I realize you’re not a nurse, but I’ve been over this with you several times...”

If one were to make a diagram of every member of the community and their connections to each other, it would resemble a wheel, a solar system, a map of Paris. Arthur would be near the center. He would be standing in the roundabout that circles the Arc de Triomph. Arthur knows everyone and everyone knows about him.

Right now he’s talking to Rita. She’s in Athens introducing Armenian mobsters to the wonders of dreamsharing. Per their request, of course. She’s like Arthur; Arthur never turns down an opportunity to dream. He loves it too much. The five figure paychecks are nice too. His sister’s hospital bills aren’t going to pay themselves.

Arthur sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s getting long again. He’s gonna have to start putting product in it. Maybe he should just buzz it. No. Looking like ex-military won’t fly. It helps to resemble the people you’re working for. “Look... okay... okay. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a dick. I just haven’t slept in about three days. Not properly. No, I’m sure you did explain it to them. Maybe just explain it to them over and over again next time. You know criminals. They’ve got more money than they do impulse control.”

It seems that one of Mr. Dakession’s goons decided to take a swing on the PASIV while the boss was out of town. Using a dirty line. The new compound mixed with the one that was previously used, and the resulting chemical reaction wreaked havoc on his mind and body. His stupidity probably saved Mr. Dakession’s life, but now he’s in the hospital.

“Don’t let him give you any shit. Tell him that you’re just trying to keep him and his men safe, which is true. The PASIV is not to be fucked with or taken lightly.” It’s been three years since funding was cut for military use of the PASIV in the United States and the UK. Since then it’s been re-appropriated by hundreds of millionaires, criminals and megalomaniacs. Most think of it as a Magical Dream Machine and forget that it’s actually a weapon.

“Alright... take care of yourself, I mean it. If he gives you any trouble just call me.” Arthur immediately regrets saying this last bit, but he can’t help it. The dreamshare community is his family, and he wants to take care of it and every member of it.

“Alright. Bye.”

Arthur clicks End and leans back in his seat, lets his neck go loose so that his head lolls to the side. The sun streams in through the window and warms his skin. Distant fields of lavender swim through his vision. He doesn’t know where he’s going to go after Toulouse, and he doesn’t care. He'll let this train drive him straight into the Mediterranean just so long as it just keeps going.

~

“Ade... Ade, it’s okay. It’s alright. You can do this.” It’s times like these when Arthur is really grateful for his military training. These moments when he has to look a fellow soldier in the face and tell him, despite the fact that he’s bleeding, that he’s going to be fine.

Ade is the architect for a very old, very wise but slightly temperamental Vodou _houngan_ in Haiti. The PASIV engineer that was working with them disappeared two days ago. The Houngan asked Ade if he could work the PASIV in his place, and of course, Ade (nobly, stupidly) said yes. Ade is like Arthur: he’s ambitious, and he never turns down an opportunity to improve his abilities.

That’s why Arthur is now sitting outside a cafe in Genoa, his coffee getting cold and his gelato getting warm, giving Ade a crash course in PASIV usage and ignoring the stares that he’s getting from the locals.

“The button to the right of the LED display is going to increase the dosage, and the button to the left of it will decrease it. You got that? Good.”

The stares from the Genoese probably have less to do with the conversation Arthur’s having and more to do with his appearance. Arthur looks like a proper criminal: charcoal grey trousers, pinstripe button down the color of a fresh bruise, four days worth of stubble, $300 sunglasses. But the whole tableaux is slightly marred by the waffle cone full of strawberry gelato in his left hand that’s the size of a small child.

“Alright, once you have the dosage level you want, press both of those buttons down AT THE SAME TIME. If you do this correctly, the word LOCKED will appear on the LED display, and you’ll hear a hissing sound.”

Arthur’s Italian is passable but, apparently, not good enough to prevent him from accidentally ordering twelve Euros worth of gelato. His sister would probably laugh her ass off if she could see him right now, her twin brother trying to look like a bad-ass and failing miserably.

“Okay, now listen, this is very important. Is the compound you’re going to be using different from the one previously used with this PASIV? Are you positive? Okay. Because if the compound has been altered at all, you have to replace the line or sterilize it. Otherwise, the new compound will mix with the old one... Alright, Alright. I just wanted to make sure. Some people seem to have a hard time remembering that. ”

Arthur licks at the trail of melted pink sugar that’s sneaking out of the cone and down his wrist. This earns him a lascivious stare from a pretty young man sitting a couple tables over. Arthur smiles at him, and the young man grins and ducks his head.

“Alright. It sounds like you’ve got it under control. Good luck. And don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything.” Arthur says these last words without thinking. He has to stop doing that. He’s on vacation, goddammit. He should do himself a favor and just throw his phone into the Mediterranean.

As soon as Arthur ends the call, he turns off his phone. He finishes his espresso, tosses the biscuit into his mouth and gets up to take himself and his waffle cone on a walk around the city.

Two hours later he has a panic attack and turns his phone back on.

~

Arthur is standing in a field of golden grass that reaches to the tops of his thighs. His face is turned flower-like towards the sun. He lets it heat his skin, lets it burn the back of his eyelids.

He hears a rustling behind him, and turns. A familiar set of broad shoulders slouch towards him.

Arthur’s skin prickles and sweats. Eames.

He ambles through the grass, his hips canting back and forth with each step. He’s got one hand is his pocket and the other stretched out, palm facing down to glide over the tops of the stalks. The short hairs that cover his scalp glint golden in the sun, the same color as the grass. He looks up, sharp gray eyes catching Arthur’s. His lips twist into a crooked smile. “Et in Arcadia ego.”

Arthur crinkles his brow. “Is that Latin?”

Eames sighs, “Don’t they teach you anything useful in the American public school system?”

“How is Latin useful?”

“Knowlege of the Classics saves lives. They are an essential source of Schadenfreude for miserable fuckers the world over. Reassurance that other people are worse off than you is the surest way to stay sane. The Greeks understood that.” Eames plucks the tip off a stalk of grass and begins to chew on it.

“The Greeks didn’t speak Latin, Eames; they spoke Greek. Did they teach you Greek at that posh private school you attended?”

“They tried to. Bollocks to that. I can’t be arsed to learn an entirely different alphabet... And it was not posh, it was sufficiently upper-middle class.”

Arthur laughs and takes a moment to memorize Eames’ features while he’s turned away from him. The swell of his lips. The depth of his gaze. The shadows that ring his eyes. “I heard what you did.”

Eames smiles and turns his gaze back to Arthur. “Oh? Were you impressed?”

“Not really.”

Eames’ lips turn down in a theatrical pout. “Pity.”

Arthur continues, “It wasn’t really necessary. You could have just gone AWOL and not stolen the PASIV. They probably wouldn’t have even bothered to come after you.”

Eames furrows his brow in thought. “Perhaps I wanted them to come after me. Perhaps I wanted to feel as though they missed me.”

“I miss you.” The words are out of Arthur’s mouth before he can stop them.

The creases around Eames’ eyes deepen. “Why?”

Arthur ponders this question for a moment before speaking. “You listened to me. And you never asked me for anything.”

Eames removes the stalk of grass from his mouth. Then he reaches towards Arthur and slowly, deliberately trails the fuzzy end of it from Arthur’s ear lobe along his jaw to the tip of his chin. He lets it rest there. Arthur can feel it tickling his lips.

This is when Arthur knows that he’s dreaming. Because Eames would never have dared to do this in real life. And Arthur would never have dared to accept his touch. Not in the chosen profession in which they found themselves. Despite the desire that swelled in the space between them. Heavy and palpable as the summer air off the Chesapeake Bay.

Arthur has to remind himself that he’s having a conversation with his own subconscious when Eames begins to speak, his voice deep and gentle. “Isn’t that what friends are supposed to do? Listen to each other? Give to each other without having to be asked?”

Arthur barely moves his lips when he speaks, not wanting to disturb the stalk of grass that Eames skims over his stubbled chin. “I guess so, yeah.”

Eames blinks and his eyes change from gray to brown. He chuckles. “I suppose you don’t have any friends then, do you?” Eames crosses his pale, lean arms over his suddenly narrow chest. “What you do have is an ever-expanding brood of outcasts and narcissists.”

Arthur shrugs. “Perhaps. But what I do is important. They depend on me.”

Eames screams, “That’s bullshit!” And Arthur’s guts twist when he realizes that the voice coming out of Eames’ mouth is his own. It’s repulsive. Like listening to your own voice recorded and played back to you. “A well-designed search engine could do your job!”

Arthur’s voice is a low growl. “That’s not true.”

“It is true.” Eames’ face has now been replaced by Arthur’s own, and it’s laughing at him. Arthur has never hated his dimples as much as he does right now. “You’re not a gangster, Arthur. You’re a fucking phone book!”

As if taking these words as a cue, the high-pitched chirping of Arthur’s ringtone begins to thrum through the air.

Arthur’s projection of himself sighs and begins to walk away. “Sounds like your phone. You should probably get that...”

The chirping gets louder. Clouds the size of mountains form in the sky. The temperature drops ten degrees. Arthur whispers a plea to his sleeping self. “No, no, no... just a few more seconds.”

Projection Arthur waves over his shoulder. “Until next time, Arthur.”

“Wait... Eames... Arthur... whoever you are, what you said to me earlier. That Latin phrase. What does it mean?”

Projection Arthur stops and turns back around. He has to yell in order to make himself heard over the wind that’s now screaming through the plain. “It means, Even in Arcadia, I exist!”

“Arcadia? I don’t understand...”

“Arcadia is paradise! It means that even in paradise, death is imminent!”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Why are you telling me this?!”

“I don't know! Why are you reliving a conversation that you had three years ago with a man who probably doesn’t even remember you? You’re pathetic! Now answer your goddamn phone!”

The sky groans and splits in half.

~

Arthur rises out of the dream soaking wet and gasping for air. His hand flies instinctively to his wrist to pull out the IV only to find there’s nothing there but unbroken skin. He shuts his eyes against the darkness of his room and forces himself to take a couple of deep breaths.

He reminds himself of the date and what city he’s currently in before he remembers that he didn’t bring a PASIV with him on this trip. It was a natural dream. He looks at the digital clock on his bedside table. 3:58. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than five minutes. And he knows that he won’t be able to fall back asleep tonight. Damn.

His phone rings to life again, the light from it turning his room a digital blue. Without has brain giving it permission, his hand flies to his phone and chucks it. It hits his bedroom wall and shatters into several un-mendable pieces.

~

_*Beep* Arthur. This is Francis Lee. I’m hoping you remember me. We met a few months ago in Stuttgart. I was the chemist for Dr. Schaeffer. Anyway, I’m heading back to Seoul, and I have a guaranteed position there with a cognitive neurologist who is also looking for an architect. If you know of any architects in Korea or even an architect that speaks Korean and would be into that sort of thing, I’d love to hear from you. Thanks._

Arthur’s father had wanted to be an architect. He was four credits short of a degree from Cornell when his father (Arthur’s grandfather) died. Massive heart attack. 54 years old.

He did what any good son would do and moved back home to take care of his mother. Back to the little post World War II tract house in west Detroit. He got a job as an apprentice to a Mr. Stilton, an old friend of the family. A tailor. He never went back to school.

Arthur’s father used to say that being a tailor wasn’t all that different from being an architect. The former used shapes to hold the human body. The latter used shapes to hold space. Arthur would just roll his eyes at his old man and give him shit for not going back to school. To this day Arthur regrets being such a dick to his dad.

_*Beep* Arthur. It’s Duncan. Listen, mate, me wife and I got into a fight last night, and she threw me last two PASIV batteries in the toilet and tried to flush ‘em. Now they’re fuckin’ banjaxed. Wonderin’ if you knew where I could find some. Me old contact isn’t answering his phone. Cheers, mate._

Arthur’s father saved up every spare penny he had, and took the family on trips every summer. They’d load up the car, pick a direction and drive, deciding what there destination would be along the way. Chicago, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Los Angeles. Falling Water, the Chicago Cultural Center, St. Francis Cathedral, Gamble House.

Arthur's dad would wax lyrical about Neo-Classicism and Japanese aesthetics and Naturalism. Arthur’s mother would furrow her brow in concentration and nod. Arthur and his sister would fight and giggle and stick spit-covered fingers in each others' ears.

Arthur’s favorite part of traveling was staying in hotels. He’d sneak out of the room while the rest of his family slept and wander the halls. He’d run his fingers along the roughly plastered hallway walls and think of all the people asleep, dreaming on the other side of them.

_*Beep* Hey, Art. It’s your sister. Remember me? Dude, please please please call me back the instant you get this. I’m going to Jason and Myra’s housewarming party tonight. You know, that thing that you told me I had to go to because I needed to get out more? Be more social or whatever. Fucking hypocrite. I need your advice on what to wear... what goes well with a shitty plastic wig? Or should I just go bare? Call me back. Love you._

When Arthur was a freshman in high school, his father died. Massive heart attack. 59 years old.

Two days after it happened, he held his sister’s hand as they stood side by side on their front porch. They looked on silently as their mom pace the length of their driveway, her face twisted in sheer panic and muttering, “What am I gonna do... What am I gonna do...”

His mother was a free spirit. A flower child raised on a farm in northern California. A shiksa goddess with long, pale limbs, a smile that made the sun shine brighter and dimples.

_*Beep* Hello, Arthur. It’s Cadence. How’s Genoa? Must be nice if you’ve been there for four days. However, I couldn’t help but notice that your cell phone has stopped giving off a signal. Hope you’re alright. You know how to find me if you need any help. Anyway, I caught wind of a job that I thought might interest you. Mexico City. Elite escort service. I suspect you know where I’m going with this. They also want a forger. Someone who isn’t too... squeamish. And someone who doesn’t mind forging women. Let me know if you’re interested. Take care._

Right now Arthur is sitting on a wonky plastic lawn chair on his hotel balcony, smoking cigarettes and drinking Nescafe and thinking. Arthur knows that he can’t remain the keeper of knowledge for the dream share community forever. Because tomorrow he’ll wake up to find his brain chemistry permanently altered by a bad batch. Or he’ll get a bullet to the back of his skull. All the knowledge that he’s acquired amounting to nothing more than sticky bits of flesh splattered over rough plaster.

That’s why the pieces of his phone are in the trash and his SIM card is sitting on the clear glass table in front of him, glinting in the early evening light. That’s why it’s 4:30 in the afternoon, and he hasn’t run out to buy a new phone. Arthur can practically feel the voicemails piling up in his inbox. Can feel the gravitational pull of their growing mass. But he needs to think without the incessant needling of his ringtone cutting into his thoughts.

_*Beep* Hi, uh... Hey. Hey, Arthur it’s Massoud. I’m... I’m in Granada... It’s... It’s Houda. Houda’s dead, Arthur... It wasn’t.... It wasn’t even related to the job they just broke into her apartment and she woke up and caught them and they freaked out and shot her. She... bled out. On the way to the hospital. I’m sorry... I just don’t know what to do. This is so fucked up._

Arthur’s always been realistic about his mortality. If he doesn’t die in some unnatural fashion, he’ll probably drop dead before his sixtieth birthday. You can’t fight genetics.

~

Arthur is leaning heavily against a larger-than-life-sized marble lion, staring up at the kaleidoscopic facade of St. Lawrence Cathedral, his eyes squinting and his mouth drooping in a stupid look of confusion and vague distress. He would probably be enjoying the architectural wonder in front of him right now if there weren’t cotton balls shoved in his ears and Vaseline smeared all over his eyeballs. Fucking insomnia.

He didn’t sleep at all last night. Didn’t even try. Just sat on his balcony, smoked, sewed an ivory button back on to his favorite silk shirt, cleaned his SIG P220 and thought.

He thought about the value of all the knowledge he’s acquired. Arthur knows that he hoards his knowledge of dreamsharing like some people do money. His possession of it makes him feel powerful and, more importantly, valuable. Without it, he would be nothing.

It occurred to him that maybe he already is nothing. It’s not as if anyone gives a damn about the history of dreamsharing. All anyone cares about now is what it can do. No one cares about the people that were there for its inception, most of whom have gone mad or disappeared. No one cares about the eighteen months that Arthur spent living on an Army base with needles stuck in his arms. Arthur’s not even sure that he cares.

In which case, the only thing he would be good for is to answer peoples’ questions. He thought then of a field, filled with golden grass under an unbroken, blue sky. He thought of Eames’ pink lips wrapped around a thin blade of grass. He saw his face twisted in a look of evil glee, his voice, nasal and piercing in his own ears, screaming above the wind.

He thought about quitting. He opened up his moleskin notebook to a blank page and wrote down four names: Jeremy, Cadence, Ines, Massoud. All of them young, ambitious and perfectly capable of doing what he does. They could easily carry this nation of dreamers on their shoulders. And render him unnecessary.

He’d then ripped the page containing the four names from his notebook, crumpled it into a tight ball and launched it vindictively towards the trash bin. Arthur can allow himself to be a lot of things: willful, selfish, exacting. But he can never allow himself to be unnecessary.

So, he sat back down in his plastic chair, lit up another cigarette and pouted like the sullen prick he realized he was being. And he thought some more.

Meanwhile, the Earth kept turning, and the sun came up once again over Genoa. And now here he is, on the steps of St. Lawrence Cathedral, sleep deprived and pissy and still contemplating how he can ensure the long-term sustainability of dreamsharing without rendering himself useless. And he still hasn’t purchased a new phone.

Arthur sighs and hauls himself off the cathedral steps and into the church. It’s even more other-worldly on the inside than it is outside. Black and white striped marble arches and painstakingly carved reliefs and frescoes painted in riotous colors. It’s as if someone took bits and pieces of other churches, all build in different centuries, and cobbled them together to form the structure in which he now stands. Christ, Arthur thinks to himself, my dad would have loved this place.

He sits down in one of the front pews and basks in the warm glow of the gilded sanctuary. He lets himself be cradled in the venerable silence that surrounds him. He imagines himself as one of the dust motes, floating through the light streaming in through the high windows.

And then he falls asleep.

He’s woken up two hours later by a little German girl. She pokes him in the ribs, and when he jerks to life, she runs away giggling. He looks around, wiping the drool off the side of his face, to see several people laughing and shaking their heads at him. He stands up and practically runs out of the church.

Midnight finds him at a cozy drinking establishment filled with an unusual number of Cuban immigrants. He’s sitting at the bar, running his finger along the rim of his glass of sangria when it occurs to him that he has no idea how he got there. Fucking insomnia. He’s done this several times today: wandered around in a dissociative state before coming to and having no idea where he is. Or perhaps he’s dreaming. At present, the thought that he may be dreaming doesn’t bother him. At least he would be sleeping.

He ends up in an intense conversation with a Cuban rocket scientist who sounds just like Tony Montana. It’s jarring to say the least. They end up discussing anarchy and communism, and Arthur’s telling the Cuban about Voltairine de Cleyre when the clock strikes 3:00 am, and the bartender kicks them out.

At 3:12 am, Arthur’s walking through the Piazza de Ferrari on his way back to his hotel. He’s making his way across the grass around the fountain when he feels the presence of two people approaching him from behind, one at his five and one at his seven. The street lights behind them cast their shadows into his line of sight.

Trained assassins would probably know better than to make their presence so easily known. It’s probably just a couple of street kids. Arthur almost sighs. If this gets violent, it is not going to end well. Arthur’s pretty sure he’s the only person standing in this square right now that was taught Krav Maga by a former Mossad agent.

He doesn’t change his pace, just keeps walking. He breathes deep and allows his senses to become alert. The presence at his five jogs forward to walk beside him. He is, in fact, just a kid. Probably no older than sixteen. Shit. “Hey, he. You American?” he asks, “You want some hash?” Just then, Arthur feels heat and pressure near his left-hand jacket pocket. The kid to his left is trying to steal his wallet.

Arthur slams his elbow into the kid’s nose before he even has a chance to remove his hand. A half second later, he catches the dull glint of light on black plastic out of the corner of his right eye. His hand flies out to catch the other kid’s wrist and twist out. His shoulder dislocates with a sickening pop. Damnit, Arthur thinks to himself, that probably wasn’t necessary.

Once the would-be thieves are down, Arthur bends over and picks up the gun that dropped from the kid’s hand. It’s a Glock. Arthur can easily take it apart and drop parts of it in various places on his way home. He takes a good look at the two kids writhing on the cobblestones of the piazza. For the first time in forty-eight hours, Arthur really wishes he had a phone on him. They’re going to need an ambulance.

He spots a phone booth and is about to start jogging towards it when a loud, sharp sound pierces the air. Arthur turns to see a small boy, no older than eight, pointing a Beretta directly at him, his eyes wide in horror and his lips shaking.

Arthur hears screaming from behind him. “Dario, corri! Esci di qui!”

All at once he feels a trickle of warm liquid snaking its way down his leg, and Arthur realizes that he’s been shot. An electric jolt of pain tears through his right thigh, and his legs collapse underneath him, his mouth opening on a silent scream. He looks down to see his entire pant leg soaked in blood which is now beginning to pool around his knees.

The clatter of a gun hitting the cobblestones. The fading sound of small feet running on pavement. Poor kid, Arthur thinks to himself. And then everything goes dark.

~

Arthur is lying supine, floating weightless in an endless ocean of white. Next to him sits a person-shaped presence blurred at its edges by a halo of filtered light. Arthur feels as a mote of dust in that halo: buoyant, directionless, free. It’s not a feeling Arthur enjoys.

The presence speaks, “Good morning, sunshine.”

The voice pulls Arthur back into his body at a crushing velocity. Everything snaps into focus and the throbbing pain in his right thigh blooms anew. He opens his mouth to verbalize his pain, but all that comes out is a weak moan.

“Arthur?” The halo dissipates to reveal a short, curvy black girl. Her baby face is offset by a lip ring and a newly shaved head.

“Cadence?” Arthur rasps.

She springs up from her chair. “Yeah. I’m here. What do you need?”

Water. _Water_. “WATER.” Arthur practically begs.

Cadence fills up a pink cup and places it in his hands. He gulps it down with trembling fingers and gives it back to her to refill. He downs five cups before collapsing back onto the pillows.

“The morphine button’s right there if you need it.”

It’s tempting what with the dizzying pain he’s in, but he has questions that need answering immediately.

“The kids,” he remembers aloud, “What happened to the kids?”

“The kids... Ah, the guys they found you with. I think they’re alright. I haven’t heard otherwise...”

“Police been around?”

“Arthur, are you sure you want me to give you the details now? You should probably get some more rest.”

“Two minutes. And then I’ll press the button. Go.”

“Fine. Yes, the police have been here. They want to get a statement from you whenever you’re ready... I would also like to hear what happened. But the real version. Not the one you’re going to tell the cops.”

“And the leg?” Arthur motions weakly down the bed. He hopes what he’s feeling is not pain from a phantom limb.

“You’re lucky. The bullet hit the outside of your thigh. Missed your femoral artery. You lost a lot of blood, though.”

“How long have I been out?”

“About three days.”

Arthur absorbs the information and nods.

Cadence stares at him incredulously. “How are you doing this?”

Arthur looks up at her. “Doing what?”

“Arthur, you just woke up from a three-day-long morphine nap. You should not be physiologically able to hold this coherent of a conversation with me.”

But I can, Arthur thinks to himself. He shrugs.

Cadence fixes him with a look that suggests amusement as well as wariness. “You are a mysterious man, Arthur.”

It takes Arthur a moment to think of how to respond to this heretofore unknown tidbit of information about himself. “Cadence, if you ever want to know anything about me, all you have to do it ask.”

“What if I ask you a question that you don’t want to answer?”

“Then I won’t answer it.”

Cadence bows her head, conceding the point.

Arthur smiles at her affectionately. There’s something different about her that he can’t quit put his finger on. It takes him a few moments of rather awkward staring to figure it out. “Your hair is gone.”

She smiles almost sadly and runs her hand over her scalp. “Yeah. Yeah, it was getting a bit... impractical. I ended up having to fight my way out of Quito a few weeks ago. A guy grabbed on to it and almost got a machete to my throat.”

Arthur knows Cadence well enough to recognize the faraway look in her eyes as meditation over her lost hair, not her brush with death.

“It looks good.” He assures her.

“You think so?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Thanks.” She smiles, and for a moment she looks like any other young, slightly shy girl. As opposed to a woman who does things like trudge through jungles in search of new ingredients for compounds.

Arthur is beginning to feel fatigue pull him down. “Time’s up. I’m pressing the button. Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, Cadence.”

She walks back to her seat, “Go to sleep, Arthur.”

~

“How long you been up for?” Cadence’s sleep-roughened voice cuts into Arthur’s daydream. She yawns and squirms in the ugly, uncomfortable chair she’s fallen asleep in, wearing her canvas jacket backwards as a makeshift blanket.

“I’m not sure.” Arthur continues to stare out the window at the tops of gray buildings. The drug haze having lifted, he’s caught in a natural daydream. Gazing into space. Contemplating nothing. It’s lovely.

Cadence yawns again. “You could have woken me.”

Arthur shrugs. “You just got back from a two month job. You could use some rest.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

Arthur smirks and looks pointedly at the book sitting in Cadence’s lap: The Haunting of Hill House. He quotes, “‘No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.’”

Cadence smiles in understanding. “It’s a great first sentence.”

“It’s a great book. What made you choose it?”

“It was recommended to me by an architect. A guy named Ander.”

Arthur stares at her in disbelief. “Ander. Tall? Blonde? Swedish?”

“That’s the one. Why?”

Ander was one of the first people that Arthur met when he went off the grid, an architect. The words best used to describe him would be ‘decent human being.’ But at times his structures could be lifeless. Arthur had given him his copy of the book partially as inspiration and partially as a joke. Arthur wonders if the copy Cadence is holding right now is the same one he gave to Ander. “I gave him that book.”

“Really? I never had you pegged for a fan of Gothic literature.”

“I’m not. It was given to me by a friend.” That friend being Eames. He’d quoted that first line to Arthur at night on a beach in Maryland. They were both hammered. When Arthur had looked at him perplexed, Eames had shook his head and said, “You should know that one. She’s one of yours.” By ‘yours’ he’d meant ‘American’. Later on that night, Arthur had puked all over Eames’ shoes.

Arthur reaches towards Cadence, palm up in a small gesture of hope, “Could I see it for a minute? The book?”

Cadence hands it to him. Arthur frowns when he sees that the jacket of the book has been removed and with it any identifying marks. He opens up the back cover. What he sees there turns the corners of his mouth up into an unabashed grin: a paper pocket where a checkout card used to rest, stamped with the words PROPERTY OF THE ANNAPOLIS PUBLIC LIBRARY.

He speaks to Cadence but is unable to take his eyes off of the words.

“This is the copy that I gave to Ander. This used to be mine.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” Eames had presented it to Arthur proudly just a few days after that night on the beach. Arthur had been pissed. “You’re giving me a book that you stole out of a public library as a present?” Eames had looked genuinely hurt by Arthur’s anger. “Does that mean you don’t like it?” Arthur had gone to return it several times but never had the heart to complete his task.

Cadence is looking back and forth between Arthur and his book. “Annapolis. So, it’s from your days in the military.”

“Yeah...” Arthur pauses and looks up at her. “How did you know I was in the military?”

Cadence smiles coyly. “I didn’t. But I do now.”

Arthur fixes her with a stare that tries to be withering but is mostly amused.

She persists, “Is that how you got into dreamsharing? Through the military?”

“Is this you asking me about myself?”

“Is this you telling me to mind my own business?”

“I’m just wondering why you’re suddenly interested in my past.”

Cadence tries to be earnest and fails miserably. “Am I not allowed to take interest in the personal lives of my fellow dreamers?”

Arthur just stares at her.

“Jin and I have a bet going.”

Arthur laughs. “I knew it. What’s the bet?”

“It’s regarding how you got into dreamsharing. I can’t give you anymore details. Don’t want you changing the story on my behalf.” She grins. “I know you’re not Jin’s biggest fan.”

Arthur smiles. He looks back down at the book he’s holding. “Well, since my story now has a monetary value...”

Cadence doesn’t say anything. She just waits for Arthur. Allows him to take his time.

Arthur takes a deep breath. He speaks lowly and slowly. And without emotion. As if he's telling her what he ate for breakfast that morning. “It was my second year of active duty. They put my entire squad under for training purposes. They led us into what looked like an over-sized examination room and hooked us all up. We went to sleep and woke up in a tent in the middle of the desert, being given orders by our Sergeant.

"I freaked out. I realized that I had no idea how I'd gotten there. I couldn't smell anything. I put my finger in my mouth, and it didn't taste like anything. I knew something wasn't right. And no one else besides me seemed to notice it.

"As soon as our Sergeant finished speaking and asked if there were any questions, I raised my hand and said ‘Sir, how did we get here, sir?’ He didn’t say anything. He just stared back at me. He dismissed everyone, and then he brought me into his private quarters. He stuck his sidearm in between my eyes and said ‘Sorry about this, Segel.’ And he shot me. 

"When I woke up, the engineers and my COs asked me what had happened. I explained it to them, and they gave me the same look that my Sergeant had given me. They took me into a room and had me fill out a sort of quiz. It was mostly questions regarding details of the dream. Once I was done, they took a look at it, and one of the engineers said ‘Sixteen out of twenty.’ I said, ‘Is that good?’ And he and said, ‘That’s impossible.’” Arthur tells Cadence this last bit with a certain amount of pride.

“You weren’t supposed to remember the dream?” Cadence’s eyes have moved from Arthur to the floor, her gaze turned inward in contemplation. She wiggles her lip ring between her thumb and forefinger.

Arthur continues, his own eyes fixed on his hands resting in his lap. “Not in the detail that I did. It was an expected side effect of the sedative they were using at that point. Remembering small details of the dream is only important if you’re using it for something like extraction.”

Cadence nods. “That would explain your ability to recall so much so quickly after three straight days of morphine dosing.”

“That would explain it.”

“I’m guessing that they didn’t send you back to base with your squad that day.”

“No, they ran a few more tests on me. Had me go under a few more times. Put some brain wave sensors on me. Sedated me and gave me an MRI.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

“It wasn’t that bad, actually. There were no scary men in lab coats. No exploratory surgeries or cavity searches-”

“They didn’t even have the courtesy to give you a rectal exam? Poor Arthur.”

Arthur squints at her sideways. “Screw you.”

“So they were perfect gentlemen.”

“Yeah, they were. They answered all of my questions within reason. They explained everything they were doing and why. They told me that they had never encountered anyone else that was able to recall details the way I could, even under heavy sedation. And they offered me the chance to assist them with research and development.”

“Did they actually offer you a position? Did they give you a chance to walk away if you’d wanted to?”

“Why would I have wanted to?” For the first time since he’s started speaking, he looks up from his hands and at Cadence. The corners of his eyes crinkle and his mouth is turned up slightly. He looks at her, but his gaze is distant and wistful. “That first dream scared the shit out of me, but the instant I woke up, I wanted to go back under. That was it for me. I was spoken for. If they had sent me back to my squad, I would have begged them to let me stay.”

Cadence gives an affectionate huff. “You wouldn’t have begged, Arthur. You would have kept your head down and done as you were told.”

Arthur turns his head back to let his gaze rest on the book that sits in his lap. He turns it over in his hands. “Yeah. I guess I would have.”

“How long were you there for?”

“About eighteen months.”

“What were you... developing exactly?”

“Everything. Different versions of the PASIV. Different compounds. Dream physics. Kicks.”

“Kicks. So you did a lot of dying.”

“Yes, I did. Many times and in lots of creative ways.”

“What about the compounds? How did those treat you?”

Arthur smiles. “There were some fun ones. Getting high at the request of the U.S. government was a bit of trip. Pun intended. There were some nasty ones though. I once went blind for four days. I once lost all feeling in my extremities for twenty four hours. I flew into a rage one day after going under and nearly cracked an engineer’s skull open.”

Arthur’s gaze is distant. His mouth is smiling, but he’s beginning to fiddle nervously with the book in his hand, picking at the corner of its spine.

A pregnant pause. Cadence takes her hand away from her lip ring and frowns. “You don’t talk about this very often, do you?”

“I don’t ever talk about this.”

“I think you need to.”

Arthur snaps his head up and levels a confrontational stare at Cadence. “Why? So I can be pitied?” The volume of his voice has risen without his permission. And his mouth is moving, speaking words that have only ever passed through his mind but not his lips. “I wasn’t a lab rat, Cadence. I did what I was asked to do, and I’m damn proud of it. And I sure as hell don’t want anyone’s pity.”

Cadence is now so far forward in her chair that she’s about to fall out of it, and she’s meeting Arthur’s stare with her own angry one. “That’s not what I’m trying to say at all. I’m not saying that I think you should talk about this. I’m saying that you have to.”

“It’s my story. I don’t have to tell it if I don’t want to.”

That’s when Cadence snaps. “That’s just the point, Arthur. It’s not your story. It’s our story. All of us. Everyone in the dreamshare community. The instant that you agreed to live in a lab for eighteen months with dream engineers, you became a part of something much bigger than yourself. That’s part of our history, Arthur. You can’t hoard that away. That’s the kind of shit that people need to know about.” She pauses. Takes a deep breath, trying to exhale some of the anger that is visibly shaking her. “I don’t pity you one damn bit for what you went through. This isn’t me telling you that you don’t have to bear the burden of your past by yourself. This is me telling you that you don’t get to.”

Arthur feels like there’s fire running through his veins. His indignation at Cadence’s perceived pity has curdled into anger at his own short-sightedness. Cadence is right; it's not his story. He looks down at the book in his hands, opens it up to the inside back cover. It's not his story anymore than the book he’s holding belongs exclusively to him, not anymore than the words written on its pages are the property of the Annapolis Public Library.

“I know that you’re a fan of taking responsibility for everything and everyone, Arthur. But you have to stop. For the sake of yourself and everyone else.” Arthur flinches when he feels a light touch on his shoulder. Cadence is standing next to him, wearing a look that is equal parts frustration and affection. “You can’t carry the entire dreamsharing community on your shoulders, Arthur. They’re too narrow.”

~

A disembodied female voice tells Arthur that he has “one. hundred. and. twelve. new. messages.” in the same frustratingly unsympathetic tone that a doctor once used to tell Arthur, “That’s about as tall as you’re gonna get, son.”

Arthur presses 1 on the inexpensive and entirely adequate phone that Cadence went out and bought for him the previous day. He opens up his moleskin, presses his pen to the page and starts writing, pausing occasionally to shake the cramp out of wrist and scratch his now sixteen-day-old whiskers.

The formerly throbbing pain in his right thigh has receded to a dull ache, the skin over the wound beginning to heal and itch. He’s sitting on top of his sheets, his torso bent over the mobile food tray that he’s using as a makeshift desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His pale blue hospital gown falls forward and nearly off of his shoulders exposing the knobs of his spine, the small of his back, the top of his bum.

He’s fully aware that anyone who walks by will be able to see his near-nakedness through the floor-length windows that are the walls of his room. He couldn’t care less if he tried. He’s sick of lying on his back. The already pale skin there has become clammy, nearly shriveled from ten days of immobility. He sighs with pleasure when a breeze blows in through the window and over his exposed parts.

Forty minutes have passed, and he’s still on the phone, when he hears the rumble of familiar wheels skating over tile. Cadence bursts into the room, pulling Arthur’s suitcase behind her and babbling furiously. “Motherfucker almost got us killed!” She pushes Arthur’s suitcase up against the chair that has now become her second home, and spins around to face him. Her mouth is open and about to let loose another rant on the subject of Genovese cab drivers when she sees that Arthur is on the phone. “Oh shit. Sorry,” she whispers.

Arthur turns to her, smiles and raises his eyebrows in delight. “Perfect timing,” he says. He takes the phone away from his ear and presses the ‘speaker’ button. A tinny version of Cadence’s voice comes warbling out of the phone. “...must be nice if you’ve been there for four days. However, I couldn’t help but notice that your cell phone has stopped giving off a signal...”

Cadence’s throws herself into her chair, her face scrunched in disgust. “Ugh. Do I really sound like that?”

Arthur tosses the phone onto the bed and turns his attention back to his moleskin. “I caught wind of a job that I thought might interest you. Mexico City. Elite escort service.” Arthur’s eyes flinch slightly. “They also want a forger. Someone who isn’t too... squeamish. And someone who doesn’t mind forging women.” He laughs shortly. On a blank page in his moleskin he writes _Eames_.

Cadence brings her knees up to her chest and begins to nibble on her lip ring as per usual. “So, are you interested?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘elite escort service’.”

“It’s run out of a gentlemens’ club owned by a man named Ezekiel Vargas.” Arthur scribbles the name in his moleskin. “The club caters to... more moneyed clientele. As well as offering escort services they’ve also begun to offer hourly rates in dreams with their girls.”

Arthur’s jaw clenches slightly, worry in his eyes. “And how’s that working out for them?”

“That’s what they want you for. They need someone who knows what they’re doing to show them how to properly use the technology. The party that introduced Mr. Vargas to shared dreaming, and the people he’s been getting his compounds from only have second-hand knowledge of it. They got a bad batch a few weeks ago that nearly killed a couple of their girls and their clients.”

“Fucking idiots.” Arthur is pressing his pen so hard into the paper that he’s embossing it. “Are we talking about professional sex workers here? Or are these thirteen year old orphans?”

“Professional sex workers.” Candace says definitively.

“Are you positive?” Arthur’s authoritative tone fills the room. “Because if I get there and find out it’s the latter, I’m getting myself and whoever I bring with me the fuck out of there immediately.”

“I’m positive. I’ve confirmed it with several sources.”

Arthur goes quiet in thought. “And what would the forger be needed for?”

Cadence leans forward out of her chair and plants her feet on the ground. “Mr. Vargas wants to get a leg up on the competition. He wants to see if his girls could learn how to forge if taught by a professional.”

Arthur stares at the name that he’s written and underlined in his notebook. Eames. The forger would probably relish the opportunity to do something so unorthodox. But an unidentifiable worry nibbles on Arthur’s brain and into his certainty that Eames would be the perfect man for the job.

Cadence stares at the side of his face searchingly. “Do you have a forger in mind?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Who?”

Cadence cuts to the heart of the matter without realizing it. Arthur opens his mouth to say Eames’s name and finds himself unable to do so. He can’t speak his name around the heavy memory of the man that is lodged in his chest.

This is Arthur’s need to possess. This is Arthur’s fear that speaking Eames’s name aloud would make him real. Would turn him from a perfectly-preserved memory that he could keep for himself into a flesh and blood human being.

This is what Cadence was giving Arthur shit about just a few days ago.

Arthur breaths deeply and speaks aloud the name that has lived on the inside of his lips for the past three years. “Eames.”

~

Cadence is striding purposefully through Genoa’s Stazione Principe, her eyes forward and her hands shoved into the pockets of her brown leather jacket. Her orange stilettos beat out an aggressive rhythm on the marble floor of the atrium. Arthur is limping behind her, a medical cane bearing some of the weight that his right leg is not yet able to. His progress is made even slower by the satchel slung across his chest and the suitcase that he trails behind him.

Arthur has refused three offers of assistance from Cadence. That’s probably why she’s walking so quickly right now. Just to spite his stubborn ass. Arthur smiles softly at her back as he ambles through the atrium, taking his time.

He feels fucking fantastic. He can walk again. He can piss standing up again. Best of all, he’s out of that sad, soiled hospital gown and back in his wool and silk. He’s wearing his favorite gray trousers, a pink shirt rolled up at the sleeves and a blue stripped tie that he’s had forever. He’s pretty sure he wore it to his father’s funeral. He’s shaved, but he still hasn’t decided what to do with his hair. The beginnings of curls tickle the nape of his neck.

He allows his gaze to wander the walls and ceilings of the train station through which he’s limping. Industrial iron arches projecting out of soft marble walls. An endless series of skylights framed in wood paneling. He turns his face up, and a soft, white light glides over him. He sighs in contentment, lets the planes of his face relax into a quiet smile.

Once they’ve reached the platform and found someplace to lean that’s not covered in soot, Arthur hands Cadence his satchel. “Hold this for a second.” He opens it up and reaches into a side pocket to grab his moleskin. He flips through it, skims the scribbles on the pages, then grabs a quarter-inch-thick bundle of them and rips them out of the notebook. He hands the stack to Cadence. “For you.”

“What’s this?”

“This is me sharing the burden.”

Cadence flips through the stack of pages, her eyebrows climbing up towards her hairline as she realizes what she’s looking at. Finally, she says with absolute certainty, “You’re an asshole.”

Arthur smiles so wide that he dimples.

“Arthur, are these all of the messages that you got while you didn’t have a phone?”

“That’s about a third of them. It shouldn’t take you too long to get through them. Most of their problems have probably been resolved by now.”

Cadence looks up at him with a mild look of panic in her eyes. “Arthur. You’re not... quitting, are you?”

“No. I’m demoting myself. Sort of...” Arthur turns away from Cadence to look out onto the train platform. He leans his back against the wall. “About a half of the messages I received were regarding extractions. Percentage wise, I’d say that’s one hundred percent more than I was receiving a couple of months ago. The demand for it is growing pretty rapidly.”

“Of course it is. It’s the perfect opportunity for obscenely rich motherfuckers to play games with each other... and make themselves even richer. But the number of extractors is also growing, right?”

“Of course it is. As are the number of architects willing to help them out. Who wouldn’t want to get paid six figures to dream? The problem is that in order to perform extraction properly, you also need a point man. You need someone who knows the in-and-outs of the business. Someone who digs for information without having to be asked. Someone who makes everyone on their team work harder with their constant needling. The last person in and the last person out. The person who puts themselves directly in harms way for the sake of their teammates. The problem with the growing number of extractions is that the number of people willing to be on point is not growing. It’s an unglamorous job with few immediate rewards. But it also requires the most dedication to the business.”

Cadence smiles broadly. “Sounds like the perfect job for you.”

Arthur smiles back. “And you.”

Cadence’s lip ring disappears into her mouth and her brow crinkles. “You think so?”

“I know so. Cadence, I’m still not sure how you managed to find me. The only direct information you had was from a dead phone signal. But somehow you showed up next to my bed in the ICU of a Genovese hospital.”

Cadence looks pleased with herself. “So is this a job offer?”

“It’s just something to consider. I don’t have any jobs to offer you yet. But I will be sending people your way. You’re perfectly capable of answering a lot of the questions I get asked and of referring people to each other.”

“So, you’re giving up your position as The Brain.” Cadence almost looks proud of him. “What are you gonna do instead? You also gonna be a point man?”

Arthur levels her with a positively bombastic smile. “No. I’m not going to be a point man. I’m going to be The Point Man.”

Cadence chuckles at Arthur’s rare self-indulgence. “I see you’re not stepping down from your pedestal just yet.”

“Nope. You’re gonna have to fight me for that position.”

Just then Arthur’s train comes into view. They both watch in silence as it crawls up to the platform and grinds to a halt.

Arthur picks up his bags and turns to Cadence. She holds out her hand for him to shake. He pauses for a moment before dropping his bags and snatching her up into a tight hug. Her feet dangle a couple inches off the ground. “Thank you, Cadence,” he breaths.

“Don’t mention it.” She smiles over his shoulder.

Arthur sets her down gently and picks up his bags. “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything.”

“Arthur, get the fuck on that train.”

Arthur grins and turns to limp across the platform. He gets only a couple of steps away before he stops and turns back around to ask Cadence, “Who won the bet?”

“What?”

“The bet. The one that you and Jin made.”

“Oh. I did.”

“So you guessed how I got into dreamsharing without me having to tell you?”

“Actually, I lied. The bet wasn’t regarding how you got into dreamsharing. It was regarding how long your vacation would last. Jin bet that you’d call off your vacation within a couple of days. I bet that you would destroy your phone first. I won.”

~

Arthur doesn’t have to be in Mexico City for another couple of weeks. So he goes on vacation.

He takes the train from Genoa to Milan. Per Cadence’s insistence. He’s under strict orders from her to buy himself some new clothes. Upon delivering his luggage to him in the hospital, she’d said, “You need to invest in some news threads, man. Your shit is worn the fuck out.”

She’s right. Constant travel has not done wonders for the contents of his wardrobe. He hasn’t purchased anything for himself in over a year. He suspects it’s less to do with his being busy and more a feeble act of rebellion. Something to do with his well-dressed father, the contrite architect-cum-tailor. An act akin to him growing his hair out after leaving the military. But part of it is just good old-fashioned middle-class, white male guilt at spending too much money on himself. Arthur still winces every time he spends more than fifty dollars on a meal.

But the instant he walks into the Ermenegildo Zegna flagship store at Via Montenapoleone 27/E, an unexpected feeling of calm washes over him. The warm smell of leather and pressed wool. Concrete walls absorbing and polished tile floors reflecting the light. He gets fitted for a suit and thinks of the first time his father took his measurements. The occasion had been his grandmother’s funeral. Arthur had been fourteen years old at the time. He had rolled his eyes and huffed in embarrassment as his father measured his inseam.

The mood is broken somewhat when the tailor taps Arthur on the lower back and says, “Stand up straighter please.” Arthur responds without flinching, “I got shot in the leg a couple of weeks ago. This is about as straight as I’m going to get. Sorry.” The tailor simply frowns thoughtfully without taking his eyes off his tape measure.

He takes a train from Milan to Venice. He’s on his way back to his hotel from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum when gets lost in a high-walled maze of crumbling buildings and canals. For two hours he wanders. His leg begins to throb, and he wonders how anyone can enjoy a city in which one never knows which direction they’re heading. Then he emerges from a dark alleyway and his breath catches.

He’s at the head of a canal, mere feet from open water that’s nearly level with the bricks on which he stands. It creates the illusion that he could step off the bricks and continue walking over the surface of the water, cross it to the other side of the canal. He turns to his right to see the copper spire of St. Mark’s Campanile piercing the sky. Directly next to him, the dome of the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute pops up out of nowhere like some Renaissance-era circus tent. He sits on the steps of the church and watches as the setting sun turns the stone walls all around him pale pink.

He takes a train to Croatia. Somewhere in between Venice and Zagreb, he finally grows a pair and sends some feelers out for Eames. No one that he speaks to has heard from him directly in a couple of months. So now it’s just a waiting game. Allowing the word that Arthur’s looking for him to make its way across the unofficial dreamsharing phone chain.

In Croatia, Arthur wanders white stone towns nestled in green coastal hills. He sits on a pebbled beach and stares out at the Adriatic. It’s bluer than he imagined it would be. In fact, the entire country surprises him. Nothing about former Soviet satellite countries ever screamed _beautiful_ to Arthur.

He shucks off his Italian leather boots, strips off his shirt and his trousers. He lays on the beach in nothing but his briefs, the warm pebbles poking into his back. He’s not going to invest in swim trunks, because he has no intention of going in the water. Arthur’s a horrible swimmer. He only learnt how to swim a couple of years ago. The tourists on the beach don’t need their vacations ruined by the sight of him flailing around in the water like a cat dropped into a bathtub.

He takes a train from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo. He spends a few days getting his mind blown by a city that, growing up, he only ever associated with war and bloodshed. He walks over the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was killed. He gets blotto three nights in a row at the same bar and becomes best friends with a Ukrainian drag queen. He’s deep in conversation with her on the third night when his phone rings. He picks it up to see the caller ID displaying an unfamiliar series of numbers. He lets it ring through to voicemail. He’s on vacation , goddammit.

He listens to the message a couple of hours later while he’s in the toilet, his dick in one hand and his phone in the other, his forehead pressed up against the cold tile wall in front of him. It takes him a couple of listens before he realizes what he’s hearing. It’s not really a proper voicemail. It’s two people arguing loudly in a language that he doesn’t understand. And one of them is speaking in a familiar, aggressive rumble that sends a rush of blood straight to Arthur’s cock. Eames.

Arthur calls the number back, but it just keep ringing and ringing. Eames probably called him from a pay phone. He’ll just have to wait for him to call back. Arthur dislikes being made to wait.

He takes a train from Sarajevo to Athens. Arthur was in Athens once a year ago, assisting Massoud with an extraction/therapy session for an aging member of the Hellenic Parliament. He didn’t see the city then. He just sat in his hotel room, on his computer for three days. Now he walks to the top of Lycabettus hill, the highest hill in Athens, ignoring the dull ache in his leg. Once at the top, he stands next to a small, whitewashed church and looks down at the roof of the Parthenon. From this height, it looks like a model.

He’s hobbling his way back down a seemingly-endless series of stone steps when his phone rings. He picks it up to look at the caller ID. He’s pretty sure it’s the same number that Eames called him from a couple of days ago. He sits down on a nearby bench and answers the call. “Hello?”

A long pause. And then a deep voice murmurs his name. “Arthur?”

Arthur is glad that he’s sitting down because the sound of Eames speaking his name after three years of buildup would have been enough to knock him right on his ass. The only thing he can think to say is, “Eames?”

Another pause. And then, “Christ, Arthur... How long has it been?” He asks as if he honestly doesn’t remember.

Arthur’s jaw clenches. Most people would express disappointment at being forgotten about. Arthur calls bullshit. “You don’t fool me, Eames. You know exactly how long it’s been.”

Eames confesses, “Three years.”

“Three years.” Arthur confirms.

Yet another pause on the other end of the line. Arthur remembers Eames being a much more adept conversationalist. But Arthur understands how faulty human memory can be.

At last, Eames speaks, and his tone makes Arthur’s stomach clench. “There were times,” Eames mumbles, “when I was convinced that I had dreamt the whole thing.”

Arthur has heard this kind of talk from people who have spent too much time in dreams. No, he thinks, don’t tell me it’s gotten you. “Eames. Eames, are you alright?”

Eames continues. “And then I think of that lovely pair of suede Oxfords that I used to wear all the time. And I wonder why I can’t find them in my closet...”

A giant grin spreads across Arthur's face.

“...And then I remember that I don’t have them anymore. Because you got sick all over them, and I had to toss them.”

He throws his head back and laughs. He remembers that night. It was the night that Eames quoted Shirley Jackson to him. The night they got hammered on the beach.

“Don’t laugh at me, you bastard. Not only did you ruin my footwear, but you put me off McDonald’s fries for life. All because you thought it would be a good idea to mix three tumblers full of scotch and a fourteen-piece chicken McNugget meal.”

“It was worth it for the look on your face. And what was it you said? ‘These are the first pair of shoes I bought with my own money.’”

Eames is laughing now. A familiar deep chuckle that warms the tips of Arthur’s fingers and his toes. “Christ, I was a spoilt brat, wasn’t I?” A thoughtful pause. “I can’t believe it’s only been three years,” he says in a wistful tone. “Feels like it’s been ages. How is it that I’ve aged so much in just three years?”

Arthur nods in agreement. “I know the feeling.”

“I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?” Arthur can hear Eames nibbling on something. Could either be a snack of some sort or his own fingernails. “I hear you’re a bit of a big shot these days. The central nervous system of the dreamsharing community. How exactly did that come about?”

Arthur sighs heavily. “I honestly don’t know. It just sort of happened.”

Eames huffs in amusement. His voice drips with sarcasm when he says, “Well, as long as it makes you happy...”

“Whether or not it makes me happy is besides the point. Somebody’s gotta do it.”

“Spoken like a true leader.”

“I’m not a leader, Eames.”

“No. No, you’re not, are you? What you contribute is rather more important than leadership. You are...” Eames chews and thinks. And when he speaks he does so absently. As if only partially invested in the words coming out of his mouth. “What you do for dreamsharing ‘resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”

Eames’ words throw Arthur for a loop momentarily. They always do. Uncanny insight spoken as if it’s not even worth a second thought. Eames has always been utterly unimpressed by his own intelligence. It’s part of what makes him so disarming.

“Arthur? You still there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

Eames chuckles. “One would think you’d never received a compliment before...”

It takes Arthur a moment to recover. “Actually, I was trying to think of what famous author would best describe you.”

“Mmm. Bukowski perhaps? Or Hunter S. Thompson. Hemingway, even. Seeing as he spent so much time here.”

“So you’re in Spain. Are you on a job?”

“No. I’m standing outside A Taste of Home. Trying to figure out how easy it would be to break in. They don’t open for another...” Arthur can almost hear the jangle of Eames’s pocket watch chain. “...three hours, and I’m desperate for some cheese and onion crisps.”

“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“Of course not. I was drunk hours ago. Now I’m just bored.”

“Sounds like you haven’t changed that much.”

“Only in the usual ways. I’ve gained a few pounds, lost a few scruples,” The happy tones of Eames’s voice go flat, “Or perhaps you already knew about the latter,” His voice is suddenly cold and distant as if contemplating something he’d rather not, “Perhaps that’s why you’re looking for me.”

“Something like that. There’s a job in Mexico City. You’d be teaching career prostitutes how to forge.”

“Mmm. So you needed a forger with a strong stomach and a certain taste for moral ambiguity, and you thought of me. Is that it?”

Arthur can tell when Eames is insulted and trying to hide it under a jocular facade. But Arthur doesn’t give self-pity a wide berth. “That did figure into it, yeah. But you also favor empathy over judgements. That’s what makes you a great forger. If I’m going to be working with sex workers, I need people on my team that aren’t going to pass judgement.”

Eames considers Arthur’s peace offering. “Fair enough. Go on.”

“Ezekiel Vargas owns a gentlemen’s club in Mexico City. He’s been trying to get into dream prostitution in order to get a leg up on the competition, but the people he’s been working with are amateurs. He wants a team of professional dreamers to show him and his girls how to do it properly.”

Heavy silence from Eames.

Arthur clears his throat and continues. “I’m guessing the job would take at least a month to do right. But it might go longer. I already have a chemist. An American named Aldous. The architect is gonna have to be in-house in order to go under with the girls and their clients. Mr. Vargas is interviewing people right now. But the executive decision is going to be ours.”

“Am I right in thinking that you’re going to be the squad leader in this operation?”

“Yes.”

“How much does it pay?”

“Five hundred. Half up front and half when we finish the job.”

Eames hums thoughtfully. “Are you sure they’re career sex workers? I don’t want anything to do with it if these girls are fourteen-year-old runaways.”

“They’re professional sex workers. I’ve confirmed it with multiple people.”

“When does it start?”

“Two weeks.”

Arthur can hear Eames nodding. “Alright then. I’m in. Do you have a pen and paper? What am I talking about? Of course you do. Let me give you an email address.”

Eames tells Arthur where to send the information. And then a comfortable silence falls over their conversation. This is usually the part where people say their goodbyes and hang up.

“So...” Arthur ventures. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks I guess.”

“It would appear so.” Eames pauses. “You’d better not have gotten taller. That inch you’ve got on me still pisses me off no end.”

“It’s not my fault that everything you ate during your teenage years went straight to your lips.”

Eames chuckles. “I’m hanging up now. But before I go let me give you one piece of advice.”

“What’s that?”

“Do your research next time before you go on vacation. If you had, you’d know that the Piazza de Ferrari is one of the most dangerous places on the European continent to walk through after midnight.”

Arthur breath stalls. “How did you-”

But Eames has already hung up.

~

Arthur takes a boat from Piraeus to Delos, a small, craggy island in the middle of the Mediterranean. Birth place of Apollo. The ancient Greek god of logic and reason. All the things that cast a light on the dark corners of the human mind. Arthur’s ancestor.

Arthur walks through brown scrub and between white broken stones. Abandoned temples. He stands on a rocky beach. He strips naked, takes a deep breath and walks into the water. He fights his way out into the ocean, and once there, he stops and allows himself to float. Allows himself to become bouyant, directionless, free. Allows himself to feel as a part of the ocean but a small thing in it. It’s a feeling Arthur’s learning to enjoy.


End file.
